Co-creating digital educational resources to enhance quality in student nurses' clinical education in nursing homes: Report of a co-creative process

Abstract

To report a methodological, co-creative approach for developing an interactive digital educational resource to enhance the quality of student nurses' clinical education in nursing homes and to elucidate the lessons learned from this approach.

This study applied a co-design methodology that builds on participatory design principles.

Co-creating the digital educational resource included multiple sequential and interactive phases inspired by the design thinking framework. Workshops were employed as the primary co-creative activity.

Seven separate homogenous or joint heterogeneous workshops were conducted with student nurses, nurse educators, registered nurse mentors and e-learning designers (n = 36) during the active stakeholder engagement phases to inform the educational content, design and functionality of the digital educational resource. These were informed by, and grounded in, learning theory and principles.

Co-creative approaches in nursing education are an essential avenue for further research. We still lack systematic knowledge about the impact and benefits of co-created initiatives, stakeholders' motivations, barriers, facilitators to participation and the role of context in supporting effective co-creative processes to increase the quality of nursing education.

This paper demonstrates how digital educational initiatives to enhance quality in clinical nursing education can be co-created with key stakeholders through a novel methodological approach inspired by design thinking. To date, the methodological development process of co-created educational interventions has received limited attention and compared with the content and theoretical underpinnings of such interventions, has rarely been addressed. Therefore, this paper facilitates knowledge exchange and documents vital aspects to consider when co-creating digital educational initiatives incorporating multistakeholder perspectives. This promotes a stronger academic–practice partnership to impact and enhance the quality of clinical nursing education in nursing homes.

Student nurses, nurse educators, and registered nurse mentors worked alongside researchers and e-learning designers in the co-creative process.